Cold Steal

by Quentin Bates

‘What does your wife think of all this?’ Gunna asked.

  Eiríkur was about to speak when the door opened and Sævaldur Bogason, one of the senior detectives and someone neither Gunna nor Eiríkur got on well with, nodded to them as he stalked to a desk in the corner, whistling tunelessly as he logged on to a computer.

  ‘I’ll talk to you about it later,’ she muttered, and Eiríkur nodded in agreement. ‘Right now I need a word with the Laxdal.’

  * * *

  ‘Something juicy, is it?’

  Gunna looked sideways at Sævaldur Bogason as he put down his tray and sat down opposite her in the canteen. He was the force’s newest chief inspector while she was still a sergeant, even though they had graduated in the same year. The difference, she told herself, was that Sævaldur had spent all his career in Reykjavík, while ten of her years as a police officer had been spent on a rural beat with few prospects of promotion in the provincial backwater where she still lived, preferring to commute an hour each way every day than move to the city.

  ‘To be quite honest, Sæsi, I’m not sure. It looks unpleasant, but who knows? It may have been some kind of role-play, or something completely innocuous.’

  He smiled glassily in a way that projected neither humour nor amiability. He and Gunna had crossed swords more than once in the past and had disagreed on practically everything on the occasions they had worked together. But their relationship had improved as they got used to each other in the detectives’ office at the Hverfisgata station, while each took care to leave the other space to manoeuvre.

  ‘There’s blood on the floor? Doesn’t sound playful to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound that way to me either. But with no body, no victim in casualty and nobody knocking down the door here to protest at ill-treatment, it doesn’t look like it’s going to go anywhere. How are you getting on up there in Borgarfjördur?’ Gunna asked, to steer the conversation away from her case and towards Sævaldur’s.

  ‘A nightmare. No dabs, no sightings, nothing at all. One drunk witness who might have seen a car that could have been relevant. That’s all.’

  ‘And the hammer?’

  ‘Nothing. We’ve been around every hardware shop in the country and haven’t found anyone we couldn’t account for who bought a sledgehammer in the last month. Have you any idea how many sledgehammers are sold in Iceland every year? Dozens of the damned things. The slugs are being analysed, but I don’t believe for a second they’ll tell us much.’

  ‘A dead-end case, for the first time in how many years?’

  Sævaldur forked pasta quickly. ‘Who knows? There have been unsolved disappearances, like the woman a few years ago who took her dog for a walk and was never seen again. But you’re right, an unsolved murder hasn’t happened since . . .’ He tore at a roll and messily mopped up some sauce. ‘Not since long before our time.’

  ‘How about your housebreaker?’ she asked to change the subject, although she knew it was a sore point and that he was concerned it could become something of a joke.

  ‘He’s a sly bastard,’ Sævaldur growled, tapping too much pepper onto the remains of his lunch. ‘Not a damned clue, no fingerprints, no CCTV, no sightings.’

  ‘Sure it’s just one person?’

  Sævaldur took a mouthful and swallowed it down without chewing, while the pepper made him cough and his already red face went a shade darker.

  ‘That’s what the Laxdal said. I reckon it’s just one housebreaker. Ívar thinks it’s a gang, or else more than one burglar operating separately, stealing stuff to order.’

  ‘So why do you reckon it’s just one man?’ Gunna asked, gradually losing her appetite as Sævaldur forked down a few more rapid mouthfuls before replying.

  ‘Law of averages. One, we know most of the villains in the city. If it was a group of some kind, we’d get a whisper of it from someone sooner or later, because these people can’t help falling out or getting drunk and spilling the beans somewhere,’ he said, putting his fork down. He bent one finger back with the forefinger of the other hand. ‘Two,’ he said with emphasis, now with two fingers bent back, ‘the chances of a small place like Reykjavík producing two skilled housebreakers operating at the same time is just too slim. Three, there are too many similarities.’

  He released his fingers and returned to wielding his fork like a man who’d been starved of a square meal.

  ‘Unless it’s a gang from somewhere or other?’

  ‘Lithuania or Poland or somewhere? Yeah, could be,’ Sævaldur conceded.

  ‘Different times of day or night, all kinds of properties. You sure it’s just one person?’

  Sævaldur narrowed his eyes but didn’t stop eating. ‘He’s versatile, that’s all.’

  ‘But that also indicates more than one pattern, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, there are still too many similarities,’ he said, pushing his plate away and opening a tub of yoghurt. ‘No entry damage, which is unusual in itself. He never forces anything. Locks are picked or he uses doors that are left unlocked. There’s no mess. He doesn’t empty drawers and cupboards all over the place. He’s so discreet that some of his victims don’t know they’ve been robbed until they go to look for something and it’s not there. Consequently we have no idea when many of these break-ins took place, and I’d guess there must be a bunch of them out there that haven’t even been noticed yet. On top of that, the stuff never shows up, ever.’

  ‘Zero recovery?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. This guy is taking cash, mostly foreign currency, or so it seems. He’s taking jewellery, electronics, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘So it’s going abroad?’

  ‘That or it’s being stashed away somewhere for a rainy day, which is unlikely, I reckon,’ Sævaldur said, staring moodily out of the window.

  ‘None of this stuff ever appears?’

  ‘Nothing. Not one single piece. We have serial numbers, photographs of valuables, all sorts. We’ve been watching the small ads on the internet, the flea market at Kolaport, even eBay. Nothing so far.’

  ‘It’s going abroad, no question.’

  ‘Just what I thought,’ Sævaldur said, as if reluctantly agreeing with her. ‘I’m going to be leaning hard on all the fences we know, and I’d better make some progress before a journalist notices and Reykjavík’s silent housebreaker hits the newspapers. So if you know anyone worth leaning on that we don’t have on our list, let me know and I’ll go and give them a kicking.’

  ‘No one that I can think of,’ Gunna said, pushing her plate aside. ‘But you might want to have a word with Eiríkur. An old lady called the other day about some jewellery she’d seen in a shop window that looked like hers, and when she got home, she found that she’d been burgled and hadn’t noticed.’

  Sævaldur’s eyes shone. ‘Really? None of our guy’s stuff ever shows up, so I don’t expect it’ll be the same one. but I’ll ask Eiríkur what he’s found. A damn shame I’m having to look after this and the Borgarfjördur case on my own with half of my crowd of layabouts on courses or sick leave. These next few days I’m leaving my boys to continue knocking on doors up there and I’ll manage things from here, which means I can get back to looking for our sneak thief,’ he said, letting his fork clatter onto his plate. ‘Eiríkur’s doing all right is he?’

  Gunna opened her mouth and was on the point of telling Sævaldur of her concerns about Eiríkur, but then she remembered how often she and Sævaldur had clashed in the past and thought better of it.

  ‘Ach, I don’t know. He’s had a rough time, what with the baby being premature. He’ll be all right when he’s back into the routine.’

  ‘Pussy-whipped, I reckon,’ Sævaldur said in a loud voice, and a girl from the social insurance office across the road that shared the police canteen gave him a dirty look that Sævaldur completely failed to notice as he inspected the point of a toothpick he’d used to excavate behind a molar. ‘In my day . . .’

  ‘In your day women were pregnant every year, didn�
��t drive cars and did as they were told,’ Gunna said in a louder voice than was strictly necessary. ‘They had a hot meal ready at seven on the dot every night, did it twice a week in the missionary position and were damned grateful for it, right? But since then we have found our way into the twenty-first century and one or two things have changed.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ he said wistfully. ‘All right, it was just an opinion. No need to come over all feminist on me, Gunna.’

  ‘Now, did you check those three out for me?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’ Eiríkur shuffled through the papers that were already accumulating on his desk and came up with a sheet of notes. ‘Right. Natalia Rodriguez, Chilean citizen. She’s lived in Iceland since 2003. She has a child with a local guy called Hjörtur Helgi Grétarsson. She’s here legally, work permit and residence permit in order. Emilija Plaudis, Latvian citizen, and as an EU citizen she’s here legally. Divorced, her former husband’s Icelandic, name of Ingi Antonsson. Two children. Been here since 2006,’ Eiríkur read out.

  ‘And the casualty? Valmira?’

  ‘Valmira Vukoja. She’s a naturalized Icelandic citizen, originally from Krajina. Came to Iceland in 1996 as one of half a dozen families of refugees with her mother, sister and an uncle. The mother died a few years ago. The younger sister went back to Krajina about five years back and the uncle still lives here, married to a local woman in Hellissandur and isn’t going anywhere.’

  ‘All that’s in the Immigration Directorate’s files?’ Gunna asked. ‘They don’t normally come up with answers that fast.’

  ‘Well, not quite. But I know someone who works there and she gave me a little background detail. There’s more, actually,’ Eiríkur said, and Gunna was aware that Sævaldur on the far side of the room was listening carefully, in spite of his show of being engrossed in his computer. ‘Valmira Vukoja was quite badly injured at some point, and patched up as well as could be expected in the circumstances, considering where she came from was a war zone at the time. So she spent quite a lot of her first year or two here in and out of hospital. But she did extremely well at school, learned the language quickly and well enough to get through university with a degree in business and modern languages.’

  ‘A model citizen. So what’s she doing working as a cleaner?’

  ‘The crash happened,’ Eiríkur said with a shrug. ‘According to what I’ve been told on the quiet, Valmira was the office manager at a company that was importing clothes and shoes, and was branching out into importing furniture from somewhere in the Far East. That company went out of business very quickly once the banks stopped lending.’

  ‘So the former office manager with the degree and six languages is now cleaning rich people’s houses instead? That’s a comedown, isn’t it?’

  ‘There but for the grace of God go we . . .’ Eiríkur said and Gunna gave him a sharp look, unsure if he was serious or not.

  ‘Anything on our system?’

  This time Eiríkur smiled. ‘Oh, yes. Natalia Rodriguez has a record. Two counts of assault, four of public drunkenness and one for shoplifting.’

  ‘And the back story, if there is one?’

  ‘There’s an extremely volatile relationship with the father of her son, this Hjörtur character, and also with Hjörtur’s wife.’

  ‘The guy has a wife and girlfriend? That’s always going to be a recipe for a quiet life, isn’t it?’

  Valmira’s eyes were unfocused, set on a point somewhere beyond the wall of the room at the national hospital as Gunna glanced through the window.

  ‘Injuries?’ Gunna asked the doctor who repeatedly pushed his glasses up his nose and let them slip down to look over them.

  ‘No, nothing physical.’

  ‘Up here?’ She pointed to her own temple.

  ‘Ah. Who knows?’ The doctor asked with a wry look. ‘That’s hardly my department, I’m afraid. But probably, I’d say.’

  ‘I’m all right to speak to her, though?’

  ‘Go ahead. But I’d appreciate it if you let me know whether or not she tells you anything that might be useful. Come and find me afterwards? I’ll be in my office.’

  He left her to look through the window in Valmira’s door, the soles of his rubber clogs squeaking against the scrubbed floor.

  ‘Good morning. Valmira?’ Gunna offered, closing the heavy door behind her and causing Valmira’s eyes to snap back to reality.

  ‘Hello,’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘My name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir and I’m a police officer. I’m investigating what happened at the house you were working at yesterday and what you found there,’ Gunna explained, watching Valmira for a reaction. ‘I understand you were brought in here yesterday. Are you feeling better? Well enough to talk?’

  She sat on the chair next to the bed while Valmira smiled and fluttered. ‘I’m really sorry for all the fuss. I’m fine.’ She sighed. ‘It was just that . . .’ she said and lapsed into silence.

  ‘Just what?’

  Valmira shook her head. ‘Memories. Bad memories.’

  ‘Yesterday you turned up at this house at eight, and it was schedule to be a four-hour job, right?’ Gunna asked and got a nod in response. ‘There was another house to be cleaned in the same street in the afternoon?’

  ‘That’s right. First number fifty, and then forty-two in the afternoon.’

  ‘Had you cleaned this house before?’

  ‘Fifty? Yes, I think so,’ Valmira said and Gunna listened carefully for the traces of an accent in her voice but was hard-pushed to hear any, although occasional lapses in grammar gave away the fact that she was not a native speaker. Not that that’s any indicator, she thought to herself, reflecting that the younger generation’s grasp of its own language had weakened alarmingly in the face of the influx of English to practically every facet of life in Iceland.

  ‘And forty-two? I understand they’re owned by the same people.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about who owns what. As I remember, we did fifty quite a long time ago, maybe a year, but we look after number forty-two regularly. There’s a dentist and his wife who live at forty-two. Maybe they’re both dentists, I don’t know. Anyway, we normally clean that place once a week, always an afternoon job.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened yesterday? You went down to the basement of number fifty and what? Were you supposed to clean the basement as well?’

  Valmira sighed a deeper sigh than before. ‘No, I wasn’t supposed to go down there. But we have to sign off the worksheet at the end of the job saying that we have left the house secure. So I always check garage doors, back doors, that kind of thing, to make sure it really is all locked up.’

  ‘And what happened? Was there someone there?’

  ‘No. There was nobody,’ Valmira said in a blank voice, her eyes again focused on something in the far distance. She sat for a moment and hugged her arms around herself, her thick dark hair shrouding her face. ‘I switched on the lights as I went down the stairs and saw what was there, the broken chair and the blood on the floor, and so much came flooding back. I don’t know if I fainted, but it was as if I had been taken back to . . .’ she paused.

  ‘Back to Yugoslavia?’

  ‘Yugoslavia?’ Valmira said bitterly. ‘That’s what it was called when I was a child. Everyone hated that old bastard Tito, but at least he kept people from murdering their neighbours.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry to hear it. So this took you back to . . .’ Gunna paused, not sure what to say. ‘Back to something you’d rather forget?’

  ‘No. I don’t want to forget that my father and brothers disappeared and were probably shot in a forest somewhere because their names were a little unusual. But I can do without the sudden reminders of what happened.’

  ‘You were lucky to escape, surely?’

  Valmira nodded vigorously. ‘Don’t imagine that I’m not aware of that and that I don’t remember every day that this place is safe and here nobody is going to knock on the door in the ni
ght and take away people whose faces aren’t quite right, or who some official has a grudge against.’

  ‘So it was a shock?’

  ‘It was a shock to see the same way of doing things. I had never expected to see this in Iceland. I know what went on there.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Valmira shrugged. ‘I guess someone was tied to a chair and questioned, in a very painful way.’

  ‘Torture, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. I try not to think about it. But I think you can be sure that he told them everything they wanted to know.’

  Soffía looked radiant, her red curls tied back as Ari Gíslason suckled contentedly. ‘You were just passing, were you?’

  ‘Well, let’s say I was visiting someone nearby. How is he?’ Gunna asked, peering at the tiny head, its eyes closed.

  ‘He’s fine. But he seems to be hungry all the time.’

  ‘The same as Gísli was. He was on a bottle when he was four days old. I couldn’t keep up. Mind you, things were different then.’ Gunna sat down and gazed at the baby. ‘He has your hair.’

  ‘Red?’ Soffía laughed. ‘That means a temper, doesn’t it? I’m already looking forward to him being a teenager.’

  ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re his grandmother. Kids can do no wrong as far as grandparents are concerned.’

  The word hit her with a force she could not have imagined.

  ‘Grandmother. It still hasn’t sunk in,’ she said. ‘But don’t you believe it. We’re not all a soft touch.’

  ‘How’s Drífa?’ Soffía asked, her face turning serious, clearly with an effort.

  Gunna winced. ‘I don’t know. She’s all right one minute and in tears the next.’

  ‘I think he’s asleep,’ Soffía decided, looking down at the baby and gently detaching him to lift him over her shoulder. ‘I hope she’s all right. It’s not her fault that . . . Well, of course it is. These things don’t happen out of thin air. But you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know. She’s not having a wonderful time of it right now. Her parents desperately want her to go home, and she’s equally determined not to, so there’s a battle of wills going on there.’